STEM jobs the hardest to fill in Australia

Seven out of the top 20 hard-to-fill job openings are in directly information and communication technology. And the proprtion moves significantly upwards if you add on jobs requiring mathematics in the candidate’s background, such as actuaries and accountants.

A recent report on how long it takes to fill job openings by, Indeed, and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr), shows almost 20% of actuarial jobs remain open for three months or more – making it a great market for candidates. The report also shows the difficulty in finding suitable candidates in a range of sectors of the information and communication sector, where 17% of vacancies made it to the three-month mark. In fact, over a third of the top 20 hardest jobs to fill in Australia are IT roles.

This hardly comes as any real surprise, but it’s always good to see a bit of confirmation bias information backing up the anecdotes. It reinforces the need for a change in our education and a greater focus on STEM, especially in the context of rising unemployment. Roles such as actuaries and IT people cannot be substituted with other skills, so when there’s a shortage the only solution is to look for overseas candidates.

It’s also interesting that the education sector has the least difficulty recruiting new employees: just under 8% of job vacancies were advertised for three months or more.